Softwr

Agriculture · head to head

Halter vs Lely Horizon

Halter logo

Halter

Agriculture

Solar collar virtual fencing and cow monitoring for dairy and beef grazing

From
9.9/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Lely Horizon logo

Lely Horizon

Agriculture

Dairy herd management software billed per lactating cow that only runs a Lely robot barn

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Halter the subscription is permanent and per head, so a 500 cow dairy carries a five-figure annual bill indefinitely and the collars become inert if it lapses; there is no owned-outright end state.; Lely Horizon billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
  • They diverge on capability: Halter covers Virtual fencing, Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Halter and Lely Horizon actually diverge.

Attributes where Halter and Lely Horizon differ
AttributeHalterLely Horizon
Starting price9.9/monthOn request
Pricing modelPer cow per month plus one-time installquote
PlatformsiOS, Android, WebWeb, iOS, Android, Windows

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Agriculture).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Halter

  • Virtual fencing
  • Remote shifting
  • Heat detection
  • Health alerts
  • Pasture management
  • Solar collars
  • Exclusion zones

Only in Lely Horizon

  • Per-cow milking data
  • Health and fertility alerts
  • Work list generation
  • Feed management
  • Farm Management Support
  • Multi-site view
  • Mobile alerts
  • Reporting and benchmarking

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Halter

  • A 600 cow grazing dairy that shifts breaks twice daily and cannot recruit enough staff to do itnot Lely Horizon
  • A beef ranch fencing off riparian margins and wetlands without building physical fencenot Lely Horizon
  • A dairy replacing a separate heat detection collar system with one collar that also does fencingnot Lely Horizon
  • An operation running cell grazing on country where the cost of internal fencing exceeds the collar subscriptionnot Lely Horizon

Lely Horizon

  • A 180-cow dairy running four Astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a daynot Halter
  • A farm adding Vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milkingnot Halter
  • A dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one accountnot Halter
  • A Lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth boxnot Halter

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Halter

  • The subscription is permanent and per head, so a 500 cow dairy carries a five-figure annual bill indefinitely and the collars become inert if it lapses; there is no owned-outright end state.
  • On-farm tower infrastructure is a separate up-front install cost that is not in the headline per-cow price, and terrain with hills or bush can require more towers than the initial quote assumed.
  • Coverage is concentrated in New Zealand, Australia and parts of the United States; buyers elsewhere face no local support, no local install crew and uncertain regulatory acceptance of virtual fencing.
  • Virtual fencing is not universally legal or accepted: some jurisdictions and some organic or welfare certification schemes restrict aversive stimulus devices, which can decide eligibility before price is even discussed.
  • Total vendor lock-in on collar, towers, app and animal data means there is no second source for a replacement collar and no way to keep the fencing working if the commercial relationship ends.

Lely Horizon

  • Billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
  • Horizon is not optional: the barn equipment depends on it, so the subscription cannot be cancelled in a difficult year the way a discretionary analytics tool can, which removes any negotiating position at renewal.
  • It manages Lely equipment and effectively nothing else, so a farm running a Lely robot alongside a conventional parlour or another manufacturer's feeder ends up with two systems and no combined cow record.
  • The migration from the older T4C system was compulsory and rebuilt the interface and reporting, and farms that had years of T4C reports and custom lists found the equivalents either missing or shaped differently, costing retraining time.
  • Everything is bought and supported through the local Lely Center, so pricing, response time and the quality of advice vary by dealer with no published rate card, and a farm with a weak local centre has no practical alternative supplier.

Pricing, plan by plan

Halter

9.9/month
  • Core$9.9/month
    • Virtual fencing and remote shifting
    • Per cow per month
    • On-farm tower infrastructure charged separately
  • Pro$undefined/month
    • Everything in Core
    • Heat detection and reproduction tools
    • Health and behaviour alerts
  • Unlimited$undefined/month
    • Everything in Pro
    • Full feature set for larger operations
    • Pasture and residual management

Lely Horizon

On request
  • Horizon Basic$undefined/month
    • Core robot operation and monitoring
    • Per lactating cow subscription
    • Invoiced digitally by the local Lely Center
  • Horizon Control$undefined/month
    • Adds herd management and fertility tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription
  • Horizon Advance$undefined/month
    • Adds analysis, benchmarking and advisor tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription

Which should you pick?

Choose Halter if

  • You need virtual fencing.
  • You work on iOS, Android, Web.
  • You also want remote shifting.
Halter review

Choose Lely Horizon if

  • You need per-cow milking data.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
  • You also want health and fertility alerts.
Lely Horizon review

Questions people ask

Is Halter or Lely Horizon better?
Neither clearly leads. Halter starts at 9.9/month and Lely Horizon at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Halter or Lely Horizon?
Halter starts at 9.9/month and Lely Horizon at On request.
Does Halter or Lely Horizon run on more platforms?
Halter runs on iOS, Android, Web. Lely Horizon runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
What is Halter best used for?
Halter is most often used for a 600 cow grazing dairy that shifts breaks twice daily and cannot recruit enough staff to do it, a beef ranch fencing off riparian margins and wetlands without building physical fence, a dairy replacing a separate heat detection collar system with one collar that also does fencing, an operation running cell grazing on country where the cost of internal fencing exceeds the collar subscription. Of those, a 600 cow grazing dairy that shifts breaks twice daily and cannot recruit enough staff to do it and a beef ranch fencing off riparian margins and wetlands without building physical fence are not what Lely Horizon is typically brought in for.
What can Halter do that Lely Horizon cannot?
Halter covers Virtual fencing, Remote shifting, Heat detection, Health alerts. Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, Health and fertility alerts, Work list generation, Feed management.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Halter: Do I buy the collars or rent them?

In practice you are buying into a per-cow monthly subscription plus a one-time install for the towers. The collars are not useful without an active subscription.

Lely Horizon: How is Lely Horizon priced?

As a subscription per lactating cow milked by the Astronaut robots, in Basic, Control and Advance tiers. Lely does not publish rates; the local Lely Center quotes them.

Halter: What does it actually cost for 500 cows?

Starting from around NZ$9.90 per cow per month, that is roughly NZ$59,000 a year before the one-time tower infrastructure cost, and it recurs every year.

Lely Horizon: Can I run Horizon without Lely robots?

No. It is the control and management layer for Lely equipment and has no meaningful function without it.

Halter: Can I finance it?

New Zealand dairy farmers can finance the install through ANZ, ASB, BNZ or Westpac over two years, and paying the subscription up front attracts a discount.

Lely Horizon: What happened to T4C?

Horizon replaced it. Migration was required rather than optional, and reporting was rebuilt rather than ported.

Halter: Does it replace heat detection collars?

Yes on the higher tiers. That is the main reason dairies justify the cost, because it removes a second per-cow system.

Lely Horizon: Does the subscription end when the robot is paid off?

No. It continues for as long as the robots are milking, which is the cost most robot business cases understate.

Share

Related pages

More on Halter

More on Lely Horizon

Keep looking

Other head to heads